Last year I was introduced to the Concertina Sketchbook by a fellow artist, Karen Stamper, who conducts workshops working exclusively with them. It is a foldout accordion book with just the right number of pages to do a satisfying project or study a particular thing for a few weeks at a time. I have several of them and just love the format and look.
Here is one I’ve got in the latest show at the Oak Park Art League. The show is called, “Where We Are: Structures,” and it runs from tomorrow, August 10, through September 7 at the Carriage House Gallery.
I started this sketchbook in a workshop with Karen and then I spent some time over the past few weeks in Evanston and Chicago and Oak Park, taking photos and sketching alleys and light posts and bridges and the waterfront. I didn’t want it to read as explicitly Chicago so there is no Sears Tower or Hancock Building. It’s more of an abstract neighborhood vibe I was wanting.
It was a really fun project to work on. The pages are filled with masking tape, stickers, collaged tags and papers, rubbings, gesso, watercolor, graphite, Japanese ink and marker. Here are some close-ups of some of the pages:
